The Alphabet Soup Is A Bit Thin On G's

January 18, 1986|By Jay Boyar, Sentinel Movie Critic

How they rate: All films are not created equal -- at least as far as the movie industry's ratings board is concerned.

The board, which is administered by the Motion Picture Association of America, recently tallied the ratings for 1985. These figures show that G (general audiences) has virtually vanished and that R (restricted) has become the most common rating. In fact, the board applied more R ratings last year than it did all other ratings combined. PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned), which was introduced in mid-1984, has already become pretty popular, though not quite as popular as PG (parental guidance).

Of the 356 movies evaluated by the board, 15 were rated G, 75 were rated PG, 65 were rated PG-13 and an even 200 were rated R.

Only one movie, an obscure picture called Game of Survival, was rated X by the board in 1985. That there were other X-rated movies released last year is explained by the fact that a film company may self-apply an X rating to a movie without the board's permission.

Allowing for the newness of PG-13, the figures for 1984 show roughly the same pattern as do those for 1985. Of the 326 films rated during 1984, seven were classified G, 102 were PG, 25 were PG-13, 189 were R and three were X.

Star rising? If there were any justice in the world, Tommy Lee Jones would be a superstar of the cinema. He made a terrific impression playing opposite Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter, and he was riveting as Gary Gilmore in TV's The Executioner's Song (which also featured Rosanna Arquette). These days, however, he's featured in a mindless action picture called Black Moon Rising.

With his craggy face, intense eyes and jet-black hair, Jones can be a powerful presence in any movie. But he has only one decent scene in Black Moon Rising, a scene in which he convinces a young punk who's holding a gun on him not to rob a convenience store. This sequence comes near the beginning of the movie; after that, it's Black Moon Sinking, and Jones with it.

Tommy Lee Jones is a genuine star presence. He usually comes off as a more authentic version of the ''good ol' boy'' character that Burt Reynolds often plays. Black Moon Rising won't end his career -- he's remarkably resilient. But it's very far from the role he needs to make people really notice him.

You heard it here first: Speaking of spotting future movie stars, that game is getting harder all the time. Few film-industry watchers would have predicted that an unknown comedian named Whoopi Goldberg would make her movie debut as the star of Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. And could anyone have guessed that Pee-wee Herman, as a result of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, would be well on his way to superstardom?

But we shouldn't let the unpredictability of the movie business keep us from trying to see the future. Gazing into my crystal ball, I can see a new movie star on the horizon. It's Lisa Bonet, the 18-year-old actress who plays teen-ager Denise Huxtable on NBC's The Cosby Show.

The main reason I've got her figured for the cinematic big time isn't that she's a good actress or that the program she's on is usually No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings. Even more significant is the fact that she somehow manages to make even the simplest things her character does seem extremely sexy.

Pee-wee notwithstanding, sexiness is still the most important qualification for a movie star to have.